Posts Tagged ‘Debt Defaults’

National debt has increased exponentially for the past 50 years. The 35-year graph shows on average the national debt has increased rapidly, even when priced in gold. Debt is increasing far too rapidly & gold is underpriced. The current national debt is equal to about 100 times the total value, at current gold prices, of the gold “officially” stored in Fort Knox. This should be cause for alarm.

During the boom years, big banks gave out billions of dollars in loans to fund exceedingly expensive drilling projects all over the world. Now those firms are dropping like flies & the big banks could potentially be facing catastrophic losses. Since the start of 2015, 42 US oil companies have filed for bankruptcy. The longer the price of oil stays low, the worse the carnage will get.

The costs of producing oil continue to rise, as a result of diminishing returns, so this fall in oil prices is clearly a problem. Low oil prices make future production unprofitable; it also leads to an increasing number of debt defaults. It is also inevitable that the price of oil must stop rising at some point because of the adverse impact on spendable income of consumers.

Some view gold as an inflation hedge, others as a deflation hedge. During times of financial stress, some view gold as an asset to own, while others might view gold as an asset to short, because of gold’s historically inverse relation with the safe-harbor U.S. dollar. Many view gold as the ultimate “risk off” asset, and just as many view gold as the ultimate “risk on” trade.

If oil stays low, it may turn out that entire U.S. oil boom was just one of many Federal Reserve inflated bubbles. If it pops, the job losses & debt defaults that would ensue could have a far greater impact on the economy & the credit markets than ever before. Ultimately then, QE 4 may need to be much larger than QE1, 2 & 3 combined!

“We are not going to change our minds because the crude prices went to $60 or to $40,” Mazrouei said at a conference in Dubai. “We’re not targeting a price; the market will stabilize itself.” He said current conditions don’t justify an extraordinary OPEC meeting. “We need to wait for at least a quarter” to consider an urgent session, he said.